The miners were warming to the old roan.

Many of them had never seen a pitching broncho before, and their delight led to loud whoops and jovial outcries.
"Bully boy, roan! Shake 'em off!" Denver Dan tried him next and sat him, haughtily contemptuous, till he stopped, quivering with fatigue and reeking with sweat.
"Oh, well!" yelled a big miner, "that ain't a fair shake for the pony; you should have took him when he was fresh." And the crowd sustained him in it.
"Here comes one that is fresh," called the marshal, and into the arena came a wicked-eyed, superbly-fashioned black roan horse, plainly wild and unbroken, led by two cowboys, one on either side.
Joe Grassi shook a handfull of bills down at the crowd.

"Here's a hundred dollars to the man who'll set that pony three minutes by the watch." "This is no place to tackle such a brute as that," said Reynolds.
Mose was looking straight ahead with a musing look in his eyes.
Denver Dan walked out.

"I need that hundred dollars; nail it to a post for a few minutes, will ye ?" This was no tricky old cow pony, but a natively vicious, powerful, and cunning young horse.

While the cowboys held him Dan threw off his coat and hat and bound a bandanna over the bronchos's head and pulled it down over his eyes.